consumer generated

First Direct, a progressive UK bank, pushes further ahead with its customer advocacy strategy by creating Little Black Book - a recommendations site for First Direct customers to post tips and advice on restaurants, travel, shops, people, reliable builders, money-saving tips etc. etc.

Prince may be eagerly suing everyone who posts live videos of his shows on YouTube, but the Swedish label Songs I Wish I Had Written, headed by Martin Thörnkvist, one of the leaders of music-business think tank The Swedish Model, is taking the opposite strategy.

Crowdsourcing has occasionally been an alternative to doing things the old-fashioned way by, say, paying an expert. While many indirect effects of crowdsourcing exist, there has been little direct impact on employees within a given organization.

Metallica have offered a rationalization for demanding that those invited to a listening party take down the reviews of the album they wrote. Oops, just some underling’s dumb move, honest. On Metallica.com, they write:

The Serenity and ABBA cases may have been resolved, but as far as I can tell, this Cricket fan site is still under threat of legal action from EMI. The crime? Altering lyrics to copyrighted songs for parodies included in a free booklet”

Back in October a Serenity fan site got not just a cease-and-desist letter, but also a PAY UP NOW demand from Universal Studios, apparently for violating copyright in t-shirts being sold through the site.

The New York Times ran an article this week about a phenomenon I’d entirely missed: the 21 year old blogger who has become the go-to source about the TV News industry. We don’t normally think of news junkies as fans, but how else to describe reminiscences such as this: